Senior Network & Cloud Connectivity Lead

National Physical Laboratory (NPL); Metropolitan Borough of Solihull; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pension scheme

Life assurance

Generous annual leave

Private GP service

Employee Assistance Programme

Group Income Protection

MyLifestyle benefits platform

Professional development opportunities

Job summary

UKTL, a National Physical Laboratory (NPL) facility, is seeking a Senior Network Connectivity Lead to design and maintain enterprise networks across on‑prem and cloud platforms. You will lead lifecycle management of networking technologies, drive automation and observability, and mentor engineers in a fast‑paced research and testing environment.

You will collaborate with security, operations and delivery teams to implement secure, scalable solutions and contribute to strategic direction for UKTL

Qualifications

• Significant experience designing, implementing and supporting enterprise networking environments.
• Expert knowledge of networking technologies including switching and routing, firewalls, VPN, LAN and WAN infrastructure and network security.
• Strong experience managing cloud networking and infrastructure services.
• Proven expertise in Infrastructure as Code, automation and configuration management.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills, with the ability to analyse complex technical issues and communicate solutions effectively.
• Experience working within secure, highly available and mission-critical environments.
• Ability to collaborate across technical and non-technical stakeholder groups.
• Experience mentoring, coaching or leading engineers.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain secure, resilient network infrastructure across on-premises and cloud platforms.
• Lead the lifecycle management of networking technologies, including switches, routers, firewalls, VPNs, LAN and WAN services.
• Act as a senior technical escalation point, providing 3rd line support and resolving complex infrastructure issues.
• Work closely with project teams and stakeholders to design and implement technology solutions that meet business and operational requirements.
• Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automation tooling and CI/CD pipelines to improve efficiency and consistency.
• Implement and enhance security controls, including RBAC, secrets management, compliance automation and platform hardening.
• Deliver observability and monitoring solutions to improve service reliability, performance and proactive issue detection.
• Collaborate with security, operations, research and delivery teams to identify opportunities for continual improvement through automation and modern engineering practices.
• Create and maintain high-quality technical and operational documentation.
• Mentor and coach engineers, helping to develop technical capability across the team.
• Engage with suppliers and technology partners to resolve issues and support service improvements.
• Contribute to the strategic direction of network and connectivity services across UKTL.

Skills

Enterprise networking

Cloud networking

IaC

Automation

CI/CD pipelines

Security

Troubleshooting

Collaboration

Job description

UKTL, a National Physical Laboratory (NPL) facility, is seeking a Senior Network Connectivity Lead to design and maintain enterprise networks across on‑prem and cloud platforms. You will lead lifecycle management of networking technologies, drive automation and observability, and mentor engineers in a fast‑paced research and testing environment.

You will collaborate with security, operations and delivery teams to implement secure, scalable solutions and contribute to strategic direction for UKTL